Saturday, 4 June 2011

Well you may have noticed that I haven't posted on here for quite some time. There are some reasons for this. That said, perhaps you hadn't noticed because I still highly doubt whether anyone reads this blog. Which means I am just typing something completely irrelevant. Wahay!

So... bad times.

Went snowboarding shortly after my last post. Things were looking sweet. The thing is, I broke my shoulder on the 2nd day, and so began my transformation. The broken shoulder sucked. I came home early and was in a lot of pain, and had to stay home for a couple of weeks, off work. While I was off work, the project I was working on started to go pear-shaped, but this isn't one of the bad things; I'm just mentioning it as an aside. So I worked from home for a couple of weeks nad HR called asking where I was. Little did I know at the time, but they wanted to know where I was because they wanted to fire me. So anyway, I also found out that HR had never sent my Bupa form off, so I am relying on the NHS for my rehabilitation, and because I am registered with my GP near my family home, I have to go to Barnet hospital all the time. This is quite inconvenient.

So anyway, shortly before I was due to go back to work (in fact the very day before), I got a phonecall at about 1.30am from my sister, via my brother's phone. Turns out my Dad had a heart attack. I raced home in record time (Tower Hill to Finchley in 18 minutes) but the ambulances were still there when I arrived, and sadly there was nothing that could be done.

It was a bad time for us all. You really don't realise what you have until it's gone and I am still incredibly sad about everything that happened. It was a stressful time and there were (and still are) many problems to deal with.

I returned to work and continued working on my project, making some good progress, but then at the end of May I was summoned into a meeting with HR at very short notice. I kind of knew what was going to happen as there hadn't been any client work for me, but they confirmed that they were making me redundant. This was bad news. Last time I was unemployed, it wiped out all my savings and racked up lots of debts; times were bad then, and I expected the worst this time round. Unfortunately due to the problems with my Dad I was also out of pocket and had no savings to fall back on, as I had previously... Apparently HR wanted to fire me a few weeks earlier but they waited until I was back in the office. How kind of them - this is from a Times top 100 employer.

So my lesson taught me a few things:

1. There's not much point in having a permanent job because they might fire you anyway.

2. Contracting pays way more than permanent work anyway, and who knows when HR might not give you the benefits you thought you were getting as part of your package.

So, I started looking for work. And it was like the olden days - I was getting loads of calls. I was worried that I wouldn't get a job but I've now got one, as an Interim Operations & Service Delivery manager for a charity. I started yesterday, and aside from a nightmare commute and the offices being in the middle of nowhere, it seems good so far (as well as I can tell after a day).

I have a project as a result of my Dad's departure. He left me his old Mercedes 190E (which I'd given to him) and the last conversation we had together was about spending a bit of money on it and getting it back on the road. So I intend to restore it to its former glory, and I am hoping to fit a 5-litre V8 engine from a 500SL, or a 3.2 litre supercharged V6 from a C36 AMG car. I just have to find someone with an engineering workshop and the skills to do the work for me, as I don't even have a place to park the thing at the moment! It's also in the bodyshop at the moment, being resprayed, and I am after a leather interior for it, as well as some replacement parts here and there. I also plan on replacing the stereo with something more modern, preferably a double-DIN unit which should fit nicely. I'll get a similar setup to my BMW, which sounds fabulous :)

That's it for now. I am not sure what to update next. I can't update about cool coffee shops or cycling to work or skiing and snowboarding, so err, this may well be my last post.